Reminiscences of 
Early Rochester 



By Rev. Augustus H. Strong, D.D. 



Reminiscences ^ Early Rochester 

A Paper read before 

The Rochester Historical Society 

December 27, 191 5 

By Augustus Hopkins Strong, D.D. 

President Emeritus 
of the Rochester Theological Seminary 



THE ROCHESTER HISTORICAL SOCIETY 
I916 






S£P 7 i8J6 



Reminiscences of Early Rochester 

I am asked by your honorable Society to give you my 
"Reminiscences of Early Rochester." I have hesitated to do this, 
because my reminiscences are so personal. To tell you about 
river and canal, streets and buildings, pavements and bridges, in 
the days of long ago, with no mention of the men who lived here, 
or of my own connection with these places in the past, would be 
as dull as one of Walt Whitman's inventories. I cannot say that 
1 was the principal man who Hved here, but I am the only one 
whose impressions I can give at first hand. I am convinced that 
my only way to entertain you is Walt Whitman's way— his way 
of treating the whole universe as a part of himself. And so I 
begin, as he begins, by saying: "I celebrate myself." I describe 
Rochester as I saw it. It unfolded itself, to my childish eyes 
first, as a mystery to be solved ; then, to my boyhood, it was a 
region of glamour; finally, it has become a notable center of 
population and influence, an inspiring workshop and a delightful 
home. You will pardon my seeming egotism, if I make my own 
personal history the thread upon which I string my recollections 
of many localities, otherwise too familiar to be interesting. 

The south side of Troup Street, between Eagle Street and 
Washington, is memorable to me, for there it was that I first 
saw the light. I have sometimes said that I came to Rochester 
in the year 1836 ; perhaps I should have said that Rochester came 
to me. My first impressions were of a frame house, one and a 
half stories in height, diagonally opposite from the ground now 
occupied by the brick house of Mrs. Dr. Stoddard. Her ground 
was then an open common of several acres, with only a great 
smoking and rasping planing-mill in its center. Livingston Park, 
with the pillared mansion of William Kidd, was then the chief 
glory of the Third Ward. In my own humble habitation, my 
memory or imagination dimly discerns the gracious form of my 
mother, as she was in the days of her youth and beauty, and as, 
thanks to the generosity of my brother, her likeness is perpetu- 
ated in the Liljrary, and her love for learning is commemorated 
in the structure, of this Catharine Strong Hall. 



Out of the dim recesses of the past there emerge faint images 
of a garden plot, in which I sowed seeds, and then dug them up 
next day to see how they grew. In the rear part of the house 
was my grandmother's spinning-wheel, together with a churn 
and a pounding-barrel of my mother's. In the parlor, which was 
too sacred for common use and was opened only on Sundays, 
there was a big family Bible, which like the parlor itself was 
seldom or never opened, but which had a gilt cross on its 
bright red cover, with rays of gold proceeding from it in every 
direction, and this Bible, with its golden light, I tiptoed up to, 
in awe-stricken curiosity, in order to see. And in this parlor. 
Dr. Pharcellus Church, our pastor, with his swallow-tail coat 
and white choker, gathered the timorous children for prayers, 
when we could not run away in time, and out from the gate I 
made, when four years of age, my first excursion into the great 
world, running away from home, as I afterwards declared, "to 
hear Dr. Church preach." 

My father was the chief proprietor of the Rochester Daily 
Democrat, and he used to instruct his children after breakfast by 
reading to them the news. One morning he read to us the 
account of a hanging. It occurred to me that it would be a nice 
thing to try on. When father had gone to his business, I discov- 
ered a rope dangling from the rafters of the woodshed, and a tub 
standing conveniently near. The bright idea entered my head 
that, by turning the tub upside down and standing upon its 
bottom, I could reach the rope and tie it around my neck. I was 
eight years old, and my brother was two years younger. I said 
to him : "Henry, when I get the rope tied, and I say 'One, two, 
three,' pull out the tub." Henry was perfectly agreeable, and 
he pulled out the tub accordingly. That is the last thing that I 
remember. Either my squirming or Henry's screaming called 
my mother to the rescue, and I was cut down. But I had a scar 
on my neck for six weeks after, and I learned a lesson which 
perhaps has saved me from a similar fate ever since. 

When I reached the age of fourteen, the house on Troup 
Street had been sold, and we had moved to more comfortable 
quarters on the East side of the river. The old house was offered 
for rent, and it became the residence of Mrs. Fox, famous in the 
history of the Rochester Knockings. Her two daughters, Katy 
and Margaretta Fox, were the professed media of communica- 
tions from the spirit-world. All Western New York was excited 
by the reports and the doctrines of Spiritualism. A gentleman 



from Mount Morris, with his wife, came to this city to investigate. 
He applied to my father for an introduction to Mrs. Fox. But 
my father was not only a newspaper man. He was also a Baptist 
deacon, and this calling up the spirits of the dead seemed to him 
forbidden in Scripture. So he hesitated. Hospitality, however, 
was one of his foibles ; he reflected that it would be his guest that 
would do the calling up ; he himself would be only a looker on. 
He consented to take his two friends to the Foxy abode, and, to 
give me a new bit of instruction and experience, he took me along. 

When we reached the house on Troup Street, we found it 
crowded with visitors. Every room, upstairs and down, was full ; 
people were sitting on the very stairs. Our guest was a tall and 
stately man, a Presbyterian Elder, and, with his wife, one of the 
leaders of Mount Morris society. My father was a sort of public 
man, whom everybody in Western New York seemed to know 
and to respect. Mrs. Fox came to the door, regretted greatly 
that she could not receive so distinguished a delegation at that 
particular time. But would not the spirits grant us an interview? 
She would inquire. So she advanced from the front steps to the 
brick walk, with her daughter Katy. and she propounded the 
question. Raps were immediately heard upon the bricks beneath 
our feet. Yes, the spirits would meet us. When and where? 
At the house of Deacon Strong, that very evening. Imagine the 
consternation of my father. To house this growing heresy and 
blasphemy! But my father was a polite man, and courageous. 
Hospitalit}' again conquered, and the spirits invaded our house 
on South St. Paul Street. 

That was a memorable evening for me. It began very 
solemnly, with the wheeling out of a heavy mahogany center- 
table into the middle of the parlor. Then the company gathered 
tremblingly around it, and formed a closed circle by clasping 
hands about its edge. There we waited in silence. Katy Fox 
was opposite me. I thought I observed a slight smile upon her 
face. T was less observant of the proprieties at that time than I 
have been since, and I ventured, alas, to wink at Katy Fox. And 
I thought that Katy did something like winking in return. She 
was a pretty girl, and why shouldn't she? But she soon composed 
her countenance. The seance proceeded solemnly to the end. 
But for me there was no more solemnity nor mystery. All the 
rest of the performance seemed a farce. 

There was no manner of doubt about the rappings. These 
began under the table. Then they seemed to proceed from the 



floor. At last they came from the doors of the room, and even 
from the ceiling. Questions were proposed to the so-called 
spirits, and ambiguous or commonplace answers were spelled 
out. I do not remember a single communication that gave 
knowledge of any value, or beyond what the questioners already 
possessed. But the efifect upon our two guests was great. That 
courtly gentleman got down on his knees and peered under the 
table, to discover the source of the sounds. It was all in vain. 
He was deeply impressed, concluded that these rappings were 
veritable messages from beyond the grave, went away a believer. 
Some weeks after, my father learned that his guests had left the 
Presbyterian Church and had joined the Spiritualists. He never 
forgave himself for leading those two innocents into temptation. 

Not all of Mrs. Fox's visitors were so impressible. Miss 
Mary B. Allen was the preceptress of the best Rochester school 
for voung ladies. Allen Street, I fancy, was named for her father ; 
at any rate it was the location for her Seminary. Miss Allen was 
a maiden lady, sharp and wiry, with a grain of wit which could 
not tolerate nonsense. She concluded to investigate the Knock- 
ings. Katy Fox had been a pupil at her school, and this gave 
Miss Allen introduction to the home of the spirits. "Was there 
any one of her departed relatives or friends with whom Miss 
Allen would like to converse?" So asked Mrs. Fox. "Yes, I 
had a grandmother, whom T loved very much, and I would like 
to talk with her." "Is there any particular question that Miss 
Allen would like to ask?" "Yes; I am interested in education, 
and I would like to know something about methods in the other 
world. Spelling, for example. How does my grandmother now 
spell the word "scissors'?" And the spirit of the grandmother 
spelled out "sissers." "Oh," said Miss Allen, "that is just the 
way Katy Fox spelled 'scissors,' when she was a scholar in my 
school !" 

Speaking of schools, I must mention a school very near the 
place of my birth, which I attended when T reached the age of 
twelve. It was situated where Plymouth Church, the church of 
the Spiritualists, now stands. In the basement of a plain build- 
ing, with gymnastic pole and merry-go-round in the center of the 
lot in front of it, Mr. Miles, a typical Milesian, reigned supreme. 
He was a stout Irishman, with long black hair and knotted 
muscles, who thought the rod the best instrument of instruction. 
VVackford Squeers, in Nicholas Nickelby, was his prototype. 
He was the best teacher of geography that I ever knew. But he 



was a savage and a brute. He terrorized his scholars. He made 
life intolerable to those whom he did not like. He would fling a 
heavy ruler across the room at the head of a boy whom he caught 
whispering or napping. When a boy ran away, he would paint 
the word "runaway" on his forehead, streak his face with stripes 
of many colors, set him up on a barrel with coat turned inside 
out, and lead the other boys in an Indian pow-wow dance around 
him. For some trifling offence, he seized a boy by the heels and 
let him down head first into a pail of water, or sprinkled him from 
an elevation, while the boy lay face upright on the floor. These 
barbarities were unknown to the parents, for Mr. Miles threat- 
ened to kill the boy that told. I learned a great deal about 
map-drawing from Mr. Miles, but I am happy to say that he 
ended his days in a Western State's Prison when serving a 
sentence for bigamy. Only recently a worthy citizen of Roch- 
ester, whom he compelled to suck a bolus of assafetida in the 
presence of the whole school, has passed away. I have wondered 
what happened when he met Mr. Miles on the other side of 
Jordan. 

My grandfather, Dr. Ezra Strong, lived in a house on the 
west side of Exchange Street, somewhere between our present 
Industrial School and the large chemical laboratory of Mr. R. J. 
Strasenburgh. My grandfather's house became famous for 
harboring William Morgan, who wrote, in its upper chamber, 
his exposure of the first three degrees of the Masonic Order. My 
grandfather knew nothing of Morgan's work, and was greatly 
surprised when Morgan disappeared and his body was found in 
the Niagara River near its mouth. The report was started that 
Masons had abducted and murdered him. At this late day, we 
can hardly conceive the bitterness and fury of the controversy 
that followed. It became the central theme of politics in Western 
New York. Many a church inserted into its Covenant a pledge 
that no one of its members should ever belong to a secret society. 
Thurlow Weed first rose to public notice by his leadership of the 
Anti-Masonic party, and it was his connection with my father's 
partner, George Dawson, that led to their ultimately joining in 
the ownership and conduct of the Albany Evening Journal. 
Thurlow Weed was for many years the virtual manager of the 
Republican party. When asked whether he was sure that the 
body found in the Niagara River was really the body of William 
Morgan, he replied that it was "a good enough Morgan until 
after election." 



Our county jail was situated on the so-called "Island," 
between the Genesee River and the raceway, on which now 
stands our Erie Railroad Station. I have two reasons for 
remembering that old jail. The first is that, on a bright Sunday 
afternoon, T accompanied my father when he distributed tracts 
among the prisoners and gave th'em good advice through the 
grated doors of their cells. And the second reason is that my 
father, some years after, sent me with a pass from the Sheriff to 
witness a hanging. As if that scar on my neck had not been a 
sufficient deterrent from anger, malice and homicide ! 

There were better schools than that of Mr. Miles. I remem- 
ber with gratitude old Number Twelve, where I got my first 
ideas of English Grammar and parsed the Paradise Lost under 
Principal Adams, and with still greater gratitude the old High 
School, where I first learned Latin and Greek under Professor 
Benedict. The High School occupied the ground on which the 
present Unitarian Church now stands. It was the roughest sort 
of a building, but the memor}'^ of it is sacred to me, because there 
I first conceived the idea that I could be something and do some- 
thing in the world. There first dawned upon me, 

"The love of learning, the sequestered nooks, 
And all the sweet serenity of books." 
Professor Wetherel was an excellent teacher of English, 
but Professor Benedict was the teacher of the classics ; and, 
though he was not great as a drill-master in grammar, he inocu- 
lated me with a love for classical literature, which I found greatly 
to my advantage when I went to Yale. And Professor Dewey — 
who could ever forget his demonstrations in chemistry, so 
humorous, so serious, so practical ? A grand old man, afterwards 
Professor in our University, he left us long since, but fortunately 
we have his able and accomplished son. Dr. Charles A. Dewey, 
to remember him by. 

I cannot end my account of the old High School without 
telling of the experience that made it chiefly memorable to me. 
The janitor of the building was Chester He3^wood, an oldish 
scholar who paid for his tuition by sweeping floors, making fires, 
and ringing bells. He began Latin with me, ten years at least 
his junior. We had learned our declensions and conjugations, 
and were ready to begin the Latin Reader, when the Spring 
vacation arrived. Heywood was jealous of vacations; he was 
twenty-five years of age ; he had no time to lose ; he wanted to 
study. He assembled some of the younger boys, and proposed 

8 



that we should employ our vacation in seeing what we could do 
wnth the Latin Reader without a teacher. Most of the boys 
smiled and declined. They preferred to serenade the girls and 
to have a good time. I alone surrendered. I rose every morning 
at five o'clock and I studied Latin till night. In three weeks I 
read all the Latin laid out for the following term. When the 
term opened, Professor Benedict examined me, found that I had 
done my work fairly well, took me out of my former class, and 
set me with the older boys to reading Cicero. I learned that, 
where there was a will, there was also a way. I became ambi- 
tious, and perhaps a trifle conceited. But I had won the favor 
of my teacher, and with him I afterwards read Horace and 
Herodotus and Sallust and Aeschylus and Aristophanes, before 
I went to college. Those three weeks of vacation work changed 
the whole current of my life and encouraged me to act independ- 
ently of my teachers. 

My next habitat was at the Four Corners. There my father 
printed and published the Daily Democrat. Though I was 
prepared at the age of sixteen, he thought me too young to go 
to college, particularly since, under the influence of Theodore 
Whittlesey, a bosom friend of mine, to my sorrow taken to 
heaven many years ago, I had determined to enter Yale. So my 
father took me into his counting-room, where I had a year and 
a half of general training, more valuable than that of any single 
year in college. There T learned to keep the books of the estab- 
lishment by double entry, to set type, read proof, take telegraph 
reports, collect bills, and manage other details of the office. The 
counting room was at that time a place of exchange for all West- 
ern New York. People gathered there to discuss the prospects 
of the wheat crop in the Genesee Valley, the election of Henry 
Clay to the Presidency, the laying of the Atlantic Cable, and the 
differences between the Old and the New School Presbyterians. 
Those discussions, especially when election time drew near, were 
often hot and vociferous. T learned lessons of business manage- 
ment, which served me in later days, in dealings with the trustees 
of Church and Seminary. One of my chief perquisites was 
access to good literature. The booksellers sent in books, for 
review. My father gave me the privilege of taking home the 
books T liked. So I was led to read, not only dime novels, but 
the essays of Lord Bacon and of Macaulay, the poems of John 
Milton and of Longfellow. At the end of my year and a half, I 



had a stock of ,2:enei al information, upon which to draw, in college 
essay-writing" and debate. 

The windows of the printing office looked out upon the 
Eagle Hotel, which from 1829 to 1868 occupied the site of the 
present Powers Block. In that hotel. Rev. Charles G. Finney 
had his quarters during the great revival of 1830. There my 
father had called upon him for a private interview with regard 
to the concerns of his soul. Mr. Finney was writing near the 
window of the room, and he motioned to my father to sit down 
near the stove at the other end. At last the tall man rose and 
strode forward. "What is it you came to me for?" "I have 
been thinking on the subject of religion. But I have no feeling." 
The Evangelist bent forward towards the stove, grasped the iron 
poker, and came at my father, as if he would beat out his brains. 
Father was startled and rose. "Oh, you feel now, don't you?" 
said Mr. Finney, and went back to his writing. Father was so 
scandalized and indignant, that he left the apartment without 
even saying 'Good Morning,' but he began to ask himself what 
Mr. Finney couid have meant. He concluded that it was an 
object-lesson, to teach him that, if he feared a poker so much, 
he would do well to be in fear of hell. At any rate his convictions 
deepened; he was soundly converted; and he became a deacon 
in the Baptist Chvirch. 

The greatest ash-pole that was ever raised in this country 
was erected at the corner of the Eagle Hotel. It took twenty 
horses to draw it to its place. Its cross-trees soared above all 
the buildings of the town. Its top-gallant mast carried the 
biggest flag Rochester had ever seen. All this was to further 
the canvass of Henry Clay for the Presidency. In 1844, when 
I was only eight years old, that pole, with the flag flying by day 
and colored lanterns at the mast-head by night, made me an 
ardent Whig, and Henry Clay's ignominious defeat at the elec- 
tion seemed to me an inexpressible sorrow. Nor can I forget 
that other liberty pole which lifted its head on the triangle 
ground where Mr. S. Millman's Sons now provide us with 
lobsters and strawberries. These two poles seemed to guard 
and protect the city, for at that time our district schools had not 
yet learned to marshal their pupils and to salute the flag every 
morning. We were patriotic enough, but we were also 
"unprepared." 

I must go back, through Exchange Street, to the Erie Canal. 
In its day that was as great an achievement as is the Panama 

10 



Canal of our own day. It was at that time the longest canal in 
the world. It was built in eight years and four months. In 
1824, cannon along its banks transmitted from Buffalo to New 
York the news that the Canal was opened. Ten years after that, 
I saw packet boats arriving and departing, at the Exchange 
Street Station. The Rochester House on the southwest bank 
was the crack hotel of the town, and the great gathering place 
of visitors from abroad. The new Aqueduct had cost $600,000, 
and it still remains a solid and artistic structure that puts to 
shame the bridges with which we have defaced the landscape. 
I well remember the excitement with which I took my first 
voyage on the Erie Canal, from Rochester to Albany, when, at 
the age of twelve, I went alone to attend the State Fair. There 
were competing lines of boats, and each sought to impress the 
public by its superior speed and accommodations. Boats left 
Rochester at seven o'clock in the morning and arrived in Albany 
on the third day, in time to take the steamboat to New York. 
None of my ten voyages to Europe have been so stirring as was 
that trip on the "raging canal." 

The Rochester House was a great hotel for a city of only 
ten thousand inhabitants. In 1834 its location on the bank of 
the Canal and at the western end of the Aqueduct gave it prestige 
and patronage. But I have never heard mentioned in any history 
what to my mind was its chief distinction, namely, that it housed 
in its great parlor the first really important Debating Society of 
the city. My father's position and acquaintance procured for 
me, when only sixteen, an invitation to join this Society of much 
older men. It was called "The Orion," to intimate modestly that 
its members constituted a galaxy of stars. Its aim was to 
cultivate the art of piiblic speaking. Each member was required, 
at the beginning of each meeting, to utter himself extempo- 
raneously on some subject which he himself chose, and to hold 
forth for at least five minutes. This first exercise was followed 
by a debate on some subject mutually agreed upon, and the 
debate lasted often until midnight. Suppers were frowned upon. 
I remember only one of these, and some of the members declined 
to attend it, upon the ground that oysters were foreign to the 
educational purpose of the Club, and were often surreptitiously 
accompanied by beer. But the Society had eloquence enough to 
swamp the House of Representatives. Heywood and Gliddon 
and Watson could orate interminably. All this was attractive 
to a boy of sixteen. I learned to think on my feet, and I have ever 

11 



since been thankful that T had that association with voluble and 
thoughtful men. 

The Canal had another hotel upon its banks— the United 
States Hotel, on Buffalo Street, now Main Street West, which 
the University of Rochester at first bought and occupied. Oliver 
Wendell Homes treated a serious matter rather humorously, 
when he said that an omnibus full of professors and students 
from the College at Hamilton came early enough in the Spring 
to have a crop of freshmen with the first green peas. But such 
was the humble origin of our University. These were giants in 
those days. The coming of Dr. Martin B. Anderson to be 
President made certain a steady and vigorous growth. When I 
think of that company of tall and alert men whom I met when 
I began my theological course in 1857 — Maginnis, Anderson, 
Robinson, Kendrick, Northrop, Richardson — six men, all of them 
six-footers, I cannot repress a feeling of admiration. They were 
pioneers, stalwart and determined, and they made the University 
and the Seminary truly great. Again I have to be thankful that 
I ever came in contact with teachers so able and inspiring, so 
self-sacrificing and faithful. They have ceased from their labors, 
and their works follow them. Next to the influence of religious 
revivals must be reckoned the formative influence of education, 
in shaping the intelligence and character of Rochester. 

It seems a very minor educational influence, but, to be 
perfectly veracious, I must mention Bishop's Museum. It was 
situated on Exchange Street, upstairs, near the present quarters 
of the Genesee Valley Trust Company. It was the precursor of 
our modern Moving Pictures, Art Galleries, and Cabinets of 
Geology and Mineralogy. The Eden Musee and Madame 
Tussaud never made such an impression on me afterwards as did 
that so-called oyster-shell three feet in diameter, and those wax- 
work figures of Othello, not smothering, but stabbing Des- 
demona. There bloodthirsty Indians were always scalping 
helpless settlers, Bluebeard gloated over his victims, and Queen 
Elizabeth glared pitilessly upon Lady Jane Grey. Jenny Marsh 
Parker has written eloquently of the learned pig that was 
exhibited there, "the famous pig that could pick out any playing 
card called for and could even spell and add. For twenty-five 
cents one could behold not only some small remains of the 
mastodon foimd in Perinton, but wax figures whose glittering 
eyes, and genuine daggers, and redundant hair, made little chil- 
dren scream with terror." One may smile at such a collection, 

12 



but I can truly say that what I saw in that dusty museum gave 
me a desire to know something of science and of history. "The 
thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts," and "the child is 
father of the man." 

And why should I be silent about the great work of Henry 
A. Ward, my schoolmate of early days, whose collection of rocks, 
minerals and fossils was first exhibited in the great upper room 
of the building on the south-west corner of Buffalo and Sophia 
streets? He was a born scientist, with a bent for the making of 
teaching cabinets. He had a love for each science as a whole. 
He had no desire to make a collection simply of fishes. He 
wished to show the progress of life from the protozoa upward to 
man. His cabinets in Rochester, Vassar, Richmond, Chicago, are 
masterly in their comprehensiveness and completeness. To make 
them up, he became a great traveler. He visited Iceland and the 
Congo, Alaska and New Zealand. He crossed the Andes before 
there was a railroad, and was the guest of Boer magnates in 
South Africa before the war. He would go to a quarry where 
important specimens were to be found, would select with the eye 
of an expert the minerals or fossils which would fill out gaps in 
his stores, would exchange these with the British Museum or 
the Imperial Museum at Berlin, all the while aiming to make his 
acquisitions an all-round teaching force, representing the whole 
history of creation. It was a noble ambition, but it made him 
a wanderer on the face of the earth, whose stories of adventure 
were humorous and thrilling in the extreme. He hated publicity, 
and he liked to collect better than he liked to teach. But he was 
the greatest collector that this country ever knew. His chief 
monument is the great Field Museum of Chicago, for which he 
received one hundred thousand dollars. But the Cabinet of our 
own University has a unity and completeness of its own, unsur- 
passed by any similar collection in this country. Many unique 
illustrations of past forms of life make it a greater credit to 
Rochester than our citizens generally appreciate. 

I have seen three several Court Houses in this City. Until' 
1850 there was only the old Court House, erected in 1831 at a 
cost of $6,715. It had a projecting portico with four Ionic 
columns, and an octagonal belfry covered by a cupola. To this 
domicile of justice my father sent me at the age of thirteen, to 
hear a murder trial, in which a Dr. Hardenbrook was arraigned 
for the killing of his wife. I listened with rapt and awed atten- 
tion to the plea of Mr. Tremaine, of Albany, in which he scath- 

13 



ingly urged the jury to bring in a verdict against the accused. 
But the jury was recalcitrant, and Dr. Hardenbrook was acquit- 
ted. Three years after, our second Court House had taken the 
place of the first, and this one cost $72,000. It was of brick, three 
stories in height, and surmounted by a wooden dome, upon which 
rested another smaller dome, with a statue of Justice and her 
scales crowning the whole. Four massive stone columns upheld 
the roof of the portico and gave an air of dignity to the edifice. 
And in its court room, I witnessed one of the most impressive 
scenes of my life. Judge Iva Harris of the Supreme Court, who 
afterwards became Chancellor of the University of Rochester 
and Senator of the United States, was to pronounce sentence 
upon a brutal criminal, whose ignorance of the English language 
made necessary the intervention of an interpreter, even to com- 
municate to him the meaning of the words that sealed his doom. 
Those who knew Judge Harris have not forgotten the large 
mould of his mind and the correspondingly magnificent port of 
the man. The bearing of the Judge that day seemed the very 
embodiment of the majesty and impartiality of the law. But, 
coupled with this, there was a deep compassion for the miserable 
being before him. As he addressed the convicted man, tears 
were seen trickling down his cheeks, his voice trembled and 
broke, he could not go on. The solemn hush of that court room 
was like the silence of the grave that was just opening to receive 
the murderer. Justice paused — but justice must be done. With 
a struggle that shook his whole frame. Judge Harris regained 
his self-control, and the words were spoken that consigned the 
convict to a felon's death. Those words were awful, because it 
was felt that there could be no recall. I learned in that court 
room something about processes of law, but I learned a better 
lesson still, namely, that Justice is no respector of persons, and 
that from her final decisions there is no appeal. Our third Court 
House cost, with its furnishings, more than $800,000, and it 
shows how great has been our advance in population and wealth ; 
but T am always sorry that the statue of Justice with her scales 
could not surmount the edifice as it did the structure of its 
predecessor. 

Old Corinthian Hall housed the Athenaeum. It was a famous 
gathering place for concerts and lectures. I heard Jenny Lind 
sing there, on a summer evening. The windows were all open, 
and her flute-like voice was heard by people sitting on the roofs, 
across the river, hundreds of feet away. The Athenaeum was 

14 



the forerunner of our Mechanics Institute, and in Corinthian 
Hall it t^ave courses of lectures by Ralph Waldo Emerson, 
Oliver Wendell Holmes, John A. Dix, Horace Mann, Theodore 
Parker, Wendell Philips, and Henry Ward Beecher. Three men, 
however, caught my fancy in those days in an especial degree. 
One was WilUam H. Seward, when he took me on his lap at the 
age of ten, and uttered prognostications of my possible future 
greatness, upon the one condition that I would be a good boy. 
The second was Daniel Webster, who swung round the circle 
after he had voted for the Fugitive Slave Bill, and strove in vam 
to calm the indignant conscience of the North. It was a bitterly 
cold dav when in 1851 he addressed the people of Rochester m 
Revnolds Arcade. He stood iii the gallery at the south end, with 
eyes shining like torches in a cavern, and cheeks red either with 
cold or brandv. He seemed the very image of disappointed 
ambition ; yes,' he seemed even then to be on the edge of the 
grave And though the crowd was so great that there was almost 
a panic when the gallery creaked with its weight, Daniel Webster 
drew from that audience little or no applause. Rochester was 
once called "a hotbed of isms," and AboHtionism was one of the 
"isms." Rochester took little stock in the maintenance and 
defense of slavery. 

l^he last man I shall mention was the greatest of the three. 
It was Abraham Lincoln. He was proceeding to Washington 
in 1861 to take his oath of office as President. In the old Railway 
Station on the west side of the Genesee, he emerged from his 
sleeping-car to greet the crowd that welcomed him. His gaunt 
form seemed worn with care, but he had the air of a man who 
was called by duty to a high destiny. Every hearer of that brief 
address felt assured, after he had finished, that "honest old Abe 
would do the right thing in the Presidential chair. I never saw 
him after that, unless I mav claim to have seen him pass to his 
burial From a balcony in Broadway, New York. I looked down 
upon the catafalque that bore his mortal remains to their last 
home As far as the eve could reach, up and down the great 
avenue soldiers filled the street from curb to curb, twenty bands 
with muffled drums were playing the dead march, and the side- 
walks were crammed with spectators in tears. I have long 
thouo-ht that it would be only fitting that there should be two 
monuments in our National Capitol precisely alike, one to 
Washington, the other to Lincoln. 

In conclusion, I must say something about the churches of 

15 



early Rochester. Of course, my first recollections are of the old 
Baptist Church on North Fitzhugh Street, where my father was 
a deacon. There had been services there long before I was born, 
commemorative of the deaths, on the same fourth day of July, 
of our two Presidents, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. And 
when William Henry Harrison died, only a month after his 
inauguration in 1841, our Baptist Church held another service 
to commemorate the work of the hero of Tippecanoe. The 
funereal hangings, the dirgelike music, the solemn sermon of that 
occasion, most deeply impressed me. I learned a lesson of 
patriotism, as well as of religion. I well remember the old 
First Presbyterian Church, which stood opposite St. Luke's, 
upon the site of our present City Hall, and which was ministered 
to by Dr. McTlvaine, the chief opponent of Mr. Finney's revival 
methods. I remember the Brick Church, under the ministry of 
the beloved Dr. Shaw, Mr. Finney's chief supporter, where Mr. 
Finney sometimes fairly thundered and lightened. I remember 
the First Methodist Church, on the ground of Duffy's Depart- 
ment Store, and the x\sbury Methodist, where the East Side 
Savings Bank now stands. Opposite the Asbury Methodist was 
the Second Baptist Church, on the ground now occupied by 
Sibley. Lindsay & Curr. But T owe most to the old Bethel 
Church, which stood on the North side of the Canal on South 
Washington Street, and which afterwards became the Central 
Presbyterian Church; for it was there that I made the greatest 
decision of my life. Mr. Finney, the evangelist, under whose 
rough ministry my father had been converted in 1839, came a 
second time to Rochester in 1856. A great company of men, 
many of them our first citizens, who had begun a new life under 
his preaching twenty-six years before, rose up like a body guard, 
to do him honor and to support him. Rochester was visited by 
one of those earth-shaking revivals that defy criticism and change 
the face of a whole community. I was at that time a Junior at 
Yale, but I spent my Spring vacation at home. Mr. Finney's 
reputation, and an inner tmrest of spirit, led me to attend one 
of his meetings. The question was propounded to me : "Will 
you from this time serve God, instead of yourself, looking to 
him to show you the way, and doing His will as fast as it is made 
known to you ?" And T answered : "Yes, I will." I went out into 
the dark, that night, doubtful about my future course ; but I 
went back to College, determined at any rate to be a Christian. 
Light came in time ; and here I am to give thanks to God and 

16 



to the Central Presbyterian Church, which in its earliest days 
gave me the opportunity of setting my feet in the right direction. 
Rochester owes more to revivals of religion than it owes to its 
providential location or to the energy of its people; for without 
those revivals it is questionable whether there would have been 
anything like the education or the enterprise that have char- 
acterized the city. 

Thus I have wandered on in my story, more and more 
interested in it myself, as the burial-places of memory have 
given up their dead. I cannot expect you to be as interested as 
I have been, and I have therefore withheld as much as I have 
given. I have not attempted sketches of personal character, 
though many a man of note shines out of the misty past, and 
many a celebration like that of the rag-a-muffin "Invincibles" 
rings its bells in my memory. I seem to see that splendid young 
soldier, Gilman H. Perkins, with his gallant company of Union 
Grays. I remember the crowd on Main Street, when our first 
regiment marched to the Civil War, and the wives and sweet- 
hearts of the men walked, perhaps for the last time, by their 
side. I remember Levi A. Ward's generosity and hospitality. 
I remember the Rochesters, after whom the city had been named, 
and who gave it character from the beginning. I remember 
Hiram Sibley and Lewis H. Morgan, Isaac Butts and S. P. 
Allen, Mortimer Reynolds and William C. Bloss, Everard Peck 
and William Ailing, D. W. Powers and D. M. Dewey, the 
Chapins and the Bissells, the EUwangers and the Sages, the Elys, 
the Moores and the Smiths. And last of all, and the funniest 
figure of all, T remember Othello Hamlet Etheridge, in his black 
velvet cutav/ay coat and white trousers, his ruffied shirt and red 
waist-coat, his Byron collar and patent-leather boots, whose work 
was sign painting, but whose specialty was diamonds. Was 
there ever such a compound of taste and vanity? He thought 
himself a born actor, and he was persuaded to make his debut, 
as Hamlet, on the stage. But, alas, he was seized with stage- 
fright ; a single snicker from the audience caused him to collapse ; 
and he rushed frantically, amid roars of laughter, into the 
grefen-roomi and into histrionic oblivion. I could tell you ever 
so many stories about Rochester celebrities, and many of them 
deserve commemoration. But I will not have you accuse me of 
the garrulity of old age, and so I rest my case, as the lawyers 
say, and relieve your patience. 

However, I have the right to a postscript, and I cannot 

17 



refrain from sayiiii^-, before I sit down, that I have seen Rochester 
grow from fifteen thousand to two hundred and fifty thousand 
inhabitants. The house of Mr. and Mrs. Willard, once the house 
of Silas O. Smith, on East Avenue, seemed in my boyish days 
to be far out in the country. What a noble expansion there has 
been to the South-east! But this is almost equaled by the 
North-east. North-west and South-west. The wilderness has 
come to blossom as the rose. Every year our city has become 
more prosperous and beautiful. I have circumnavigated the 
United States, and I have traveled much in foreign lands, but I 
have never found a city with so large a proportion of comfortable 
homes or such a general air of culture and refinement. No street 
in the world surpasses East Avenue, unless it be the street of 
millionaires in Pasadena, California. No city is better provided 
with educational facilities, or has a society more appreciative of 
merit. We have a goodly heritage. Let us be thankful to the 
fathers who founded our institutions, who planned our hospitals 
and our parks, who set the pace for our own generation by their 
plain living and high thinking. 

When T go to Mount Hope, I am reminded that a large part 
of Rochester is underground. Eighty-one thousand have been 
alreadv buried there — five times as many as lived in Rochester 
when 1 was born. My first pastor, Dr. Pharcellus Church, 
delivered the dedicatory address at the opening of that beautiful 
cemetery, and in the Village Reader, one of my first text books, 
his address was printed as a model for declamation. He inter- 
preted the name Mount Hope as meaning that death does not 
end all, but is only our time of beginning, and that hope can never 
hope too much as we look into the future for ourselves or others. 
What shall be the future of Rochester? Eet us fixedly resolve 
that, so far as in us lies, w^e will hand down, to those who come 
after us, what we have ourselves received, but with some incre- 
ment of intelligence and purpose due to our peculiar opportunities 
and experience. "Other men labored, and we have entered into 
their labors" — "As we have freely received," so let us "freelv 



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